


Erlkönigs Tochter

by osprey_archer



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: Gen, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 08:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She wanted to help the Erlking’s daughter, just like she’d wanted to help Mytho, because she always wanted to help </i>everyone.</p><p>Late one night, paddling across a lake in the mist, Fakir and Ahiru hear the Erlking's daughter singing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Erlkönigs Tochter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [margueritem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/margueritem/gifts).



Fakir pulled the paddle into the rowboat and let them drift. There was no point in paddling, with the mist so thick in the light of the full moon that he couldn’t see the lakeshore. He could barely even see Ahiru, who stood on the prow of their boat, half-obscured in the mist. She made an ungainly figure, a clumsy duck with a tuft of feathers sticking out of her head. 

He smiled, looking at her, but her stillness made him uneasy. She stretched her neck, as if listening to something; and she stood so still that it gave him the strange unpleasant feeling that she had in truth turned into a figurehead. 

It would be just like Ahiru to turn into a statue on him. As if changing into (well, changing _back_ into) a duck weren’t bad enough! 

But: “Quack,” said Ahiru, softly, shifting on her big webbed feet, as awkward as the ballerina she had been when they first met. Maybe the lake seemed eerie to her, too.

“Want to turn back?” Fakir said, reaching for the paddle. It scraped on the wood, sounding loud in the thick mist. 

And that was when Fakir heard the voice, drifting through the mist: a girl’s voice, high and sweet and thin as silver bells. 

“Der Erlkönig,” she sang. Every hair on Fakir’s arm rose. A sweet voice, but metallic, somehow. She sounded so sad. “Do you not see the Erlking?”

Fakir dipped the paddle in the water. They couldn’t see where they were going, but they’d be able to hear that they were going away from her. Ahiru turned her head sharply to stare at him. 

“We’re leaving,” Fakir said, very quietly. 

Ahiru glared. “Quack!” 

He wished, as he so often wished, that Ahiru could talk. But develop his gift as he might, he could not write Ahiru a voice any more than he could write a tale that changed her into a girl again. 

“I’m doing it to protect us,” Fakir said, a little louder, because he wasn’t very good at modulating his voice when he was angry or frightened (or both). 

The high silver voice pealed. “Don’t you hear what the Erlking promises me?” it sang, high and sad. Ahiru ruffled her feathers again, and jumped off the rowboat’s prow. 

“Ahiru!” Fakir snarled, still trying to be soft. But she swam on – of course she did; the sadness called to her, demanding to be healed – and Fakir’s temper, never very far from the surface, broke loose. “ _Ahiru_!” 

She flicked her tail at him and swam faster, as graceful in the water as she was not on land. 

“Idiot!” Fakir snapped. She didn’t even seem to hear. Fakir paddled after. “Slow down!” 

Ahiru just swam faster still. She disappeared into the mist. Fakir swore and slammed the paddle into the water, following her wake. 

The voice rose again, a counterpoint to the paddle dipping in the water. “Come quiet with the Erlking,” it sang, trembling with sorrow, and Fakir smacked his paddle against the side of the boat in frustration. “The Erlking’s daughters call for you…”

“Shut up!” Fakir yelled. 

Silence. 

The mist abruptly opened. The moss-covered banks rose before him, and at the rocky edge knelt a skinny girl: a pointy face, a tuft of hair sticking out from under her red hood – 

Fakir’s fingers were numb on the paddle. It clattered in the bottom of the boat. “Ahiru?” he croaked.

The girl leapt to her feet, her hood falling back. Her hair was brown, not red, as Ahiru’s had been. Her fierce guarded face and arms tight to her chest were nothing at all like Ahiru’s open, silly smile. “Who are you?” Fakir demanded, thrown, but she backed away up the mossy bank. She held something to her chest: she held – 

“Ahiru!” Fakir shouted. 

Ahiru quacked cheerfully, her head lying on the girl’s skinny collarbone. “Ahiru, you stupid bird!” he shouted. He grabbed for his paddle. “Get back here!” 

The girl ran into the dark woods, Ahiru in her arms. 

Fakir cursed. He tossed his paddle aside, leapt from the boat to the bank, and chased after her into the moon-stained black trees. 

***

The darkness seemed thicker in the forest. Fakir stumbled over fallen logs and tangled weeds and scratched his hands on rough-barked trees as he chased the red-cloaked girl. She ran just on the edge of his sight, and whenever he thought he’d lost her, she appeared again, white dress glimmering in the moonlight. 

_She’s leading me somewhere,_ he thought, heart pounding. But what could he do other than follow? The girl had Ahiru!

Then suddenly, he lost sight of her. He stopped, gasping, his breath searing his throat. He checked his sword, still loose in its scabbard, and turned in a slow circle, searching the trees. 

There! A glimpse of white among the birches!

He crept forward. But the whiteness remained indistinct, as if a mist had descended to fill just one clearing. Unnatural. He pulled out his sword. The hiss as it left its scabbard comforted him. 

He crept up to the birch trees, and gasped.

Beneath the tall white trees, the red-cloaked girl danced with Ahiru in her arms. But she was not alone: a dozen more girls danced as well, all with long dark braids and longer red cloaks and white dresses that glimmered in the moon. They spun so fast their faces blurred; and they sang, “Come dance with me! Come dance with me!” 

And each one held Ahiru. 

Fakir took a faltering step forward. His heart pounded in his throat. His throat clogged with rage, and he raised his sword and charged into the center of the circle. “Let Ahiru go!” 

The girls laughed, a wild raucous sound, like a flock of cawing crows. The hair on Fakir’s arms rose again. 

“Ahiru? Ahiru? Ahiru?” they said, and each held out her duck. “Pick the real Ahiru, and we will let you have her,” one of the daughters said. 

Fakir turned, trying to pick out which one spoke. But they all danced past, as alike as a dozen shards of color in a kaleidoscope, and as cold. They spun around him, and around, and spun around so fast that his head spun too. Dizziness roared in his ears. They spun and spun, red cloak and white dress and moonlight. He was on his knees, holding himself up with a hand on the ground, the birch leaves digging into his palm, spinning and spinning and spinning – 

“ _Quack!_ ”

“Ahiru!” Fakir gasped. “Come here!” 

But none of the Ahirus moved. His heart pounded. “Let her go,” he growled. 

“She doesn’t _want_ to go,” one of them said, and again, though he spun to look at them all, he couldn’t make out which one. “She wants to stay here with me!”

And it was true. The girls weren’t holding her tightly, and anyway, Ahiru wasn’t shy about pecking when someone she didn’t like held her. “The Erlking,” the girls sang, their high silver voices blending in an eerie carillon. “She will stay with the Erlking’s daughters; we will lead the nightly dance.”

Ahiru loved to dance. And he wasn’t nice enough to her; he yelled at her; the Erlking’s daughters would love her better – 

“No!” shouted Fakir, because if there was one thing he knew, it was stories. “The Erlking’s love is death!” he yelled.

The dance stopped. Half the girls disappeared, and Fakir saw the dancers, suddenly, for what they were. “You’re reflections! They’re all just reflections of you!”

The reflections wavered. Fakir stabbed his sword into the earth and grasped the hilt to pull himself upright. There: the girl beneath the tallest birch, in the brightest moonlight. Her feet touched the ground. 

He raised his sword and started toward her. “Quack!” Ahiru cried, and then she jumped from the girl’s arms and ran toward Fakir. 

Fakir stopped. “See how she protects me!” the girl cried. “Because I am the Erlking’s daughter; even the fowl in the field can’t resist my temptations!” 

“Temptation!” exploded Fakir. “You didn’t _tempt_ Ahiru! I know her: she only followed because you sounded so sad and she wanted to help!” 

The girl gave a sobbing gasp. 

Ahiru tugged on the hem of Fakir’s trousers, hard enough that he stumbled. “What do you want?” he snapped; but of course he knew. She wanted to help the Erlking’s daughter, just like she’d wanted to help Mytho, because she always wanted to help _everyone_. 

How could he protect someone with no sense of self-preservation? 

“Quack!” Ahiru cried, pecking his ankle sharply. 

The girl hadn’t moved. She stood, thin and awkward, with her face averted and her hands clenching and unclenching; and in the indistinct light she looked so much like Ahiru as a ballet dancer that it brought a lump to his throat. 

Fakir bent to look Ahiru in the eye. “What do you want me to do?” he asked, and Ahiru spread her wings and bowed to him, as if she were asking him to dance. As if she were Princess Tutu again, and could solve all the world’s problems by dancing. 

He understood, then. “No,” he snarled.

“Quack!” 

Funny how she could stuff so much protest into one vocalization. 

“Hey,” he said to the girl, gruffly, and could not believe he was doing any such thing. “Dance with me.” 

The girl looked sharply at him, her tears silvery in the moon. “Why should I?” she snapped. 

What would Princess Tutu say? He held out his hand, palm up. “Aren’t you tired of dancing alone?” 

She sucked in her lower lip. Then she stepped forward and touched her hand lightly to his. 

He bowed. “What’s your name?” he asked. 

“I’m the Erlking’s daughter,” she said.

“That’s not a _name_ ,” Fakir said. 

She spun away from him. He leaped after her. How long had it been since he’d practiced ballet? His legs ached from the unaccustomed movement. 

“How did you become the Erlking’s daughter?” 

“My father brought me here. He said we were taking a basket of our good butterkäse cheese to my grandmother, but we weren’t on the path to her house, and I knew he meant to leave me in the woods,” she said, and spun again, so fast. “I laid a line of stones behind me so I could find my way home. But when I saw him leaving me I chased after him, calling; but he never slowed down! When I learn the Erlking’s magic, then no one will resist me when I call!”

“But they won’t be able to stay with you,” Fakir said. “They’ll come to you, and they’ll die.”

“So I’ll just call others!” she cried, with a stomp of her foot. 

“Yeah? And then what’ll you do, have a tea party with their corpses? You’ll still be all alone! You’ll _always_ be alone if you become the Erlking’s daughter!”

The girl shrieked. She fell to her knees, her arms around her head. Fakir gaped. This never happened when Princess Tutu danced people through their problems. “Ahiru – ” 

But Ahiru was already there, pressed against the girl’s side. “Quack?” she said, softly; and the weeping girl picked her up.

Fakir sat down awkwardly on the leaves. His sword hilt dug into his side. “Come on,” he said. “Both your fathers sound pretty rotten, but maybe…maybe we can find your grandmother?”

She shook her head. Her hood obscured her face. “It’s too far,” she said, voice clogged with tears. “She’s too far away, or she would have come found me.”

“Listen,” said Fakir. “I can make things happen when I write about them. Ahiru and I needed a boat just now, and I wrote it right out of a story. So I’ll – I’ll write, one day – what’s your name?”

She stared at him suspiciously. “My name?”

“I can’t write a story if the main character doesn’t have a name.”

The girl stared at him. Ahiru took a loose lock of the girl’s hair in her beak and gave it a gentle tug. _You can trust us._

The girl took a deep shuddering breath. “Gretel,” she said. “Gretel Hood.”

The birch trees began to shake. Dull gold leaves fell in a torrent, hurtling through the air. The wind drove Fakir to his knees. He covered his face against the sharp-edged leaves. An owl-hollow voice cried, “No! No! _No!_!” 

“It’s the Erlking!” Gretel screamed. “Run!”

Fakir staggered to his feet. But there was nowhere to run. The Erlking stood in the center of the clearing. Fakir couldn’t see his face, or anything of him, really: just a tall shadowy bulk, spilling a vaster shadow over the leaves. It crept toward them, then fell back again, and lapped forward again, like the high tide creeping up a beach. 

“Daddy?” Gretel gasped. Then she stomped a foot. “No! You’re not – !”

“Hush now,” said the Erlking, sweet and soothing. Gretel gasped, and grabbed her throat. 

“Hey!” cried Fakir. He stepped forward, hand on his sword.

The Erlking’s black shadow lapped at his feet. Fakir’s hand fell nerveless from the hilt. Why was he touching his sword, even? He was safe, here, with – 

With who? It was funny, because the figure only stood halfway across the little clearing. But he couldn’t tell who it was. His mother and father? “But they’re dead,” he said, puzzled, and for a moment he could almost think. Then the figure looked like Mytho, for a moment.

And then he saw who it was. “Ahiru,” he breathed, and stepped forward. Ahiru smiled at him, all big eyes and unruly red hair. A little older than last time he’d seen her: less awkward, now, grown into herself. 

Gretel grabbed his arm. “No, no,” she said. “Don’t believe him.” 

Ahiru said, “Fakir?” Her voice was high and sweet, determined, like always. “You’re coming with me, right? We’re going to work together!” 

Fakir shook off Gretel’s hand. Something pecked at his feet. He shook it off too, and stepped forward again. Why was he so slow? Like moving through a dream. 

“QUACK!” 

And Ahiru, the real Ahiru, the duck Ahiru, flashed in front of his eyes. 

“Ahiru!” screamed Fakir. But she didn’t listen – she never listened! – fast as a falcon she flew toward the Erlking. 

The Erlking struck her to the ground. 

“No!”

Fakir’s sword rang from his scabbard. His feet punched the leaves as he charged. The Erlking whirled aside as Fakir lunged, and Fakir’s sword sang through the Erlking’s cloak. 

And then pain exploded through Fakir as the Erlking hurled him across the clearing. His training saved him: he didn’t hit the tree headlong, as the Erlking intended, but caught himself with his arm. His shirt ripped, and his skin, and he slammed against the trunk and fell to the ground. 

_Get up_ , he thought muzzily. _Get up; find Ahiru_ – but he couldn’t – his breath was knocked out of him. He lay, and gasped. 

The Erlking was laughing. “Do you think you can kill _me_? I live in a thousand ballads!” 

“We stopped…Drosselmeyer,” Fakir gasped. “You’re not even a…storyteller, just a…story, and – ”

“And it’s been so long since I’ve eaten,” the Erlking said. He glided toward Fakir. Fakir groped feebly for his sword, but it was too late, too late, too – 

“Stop!” screamed Gretel. 

The Erlking stopped. “What is it, my daughter?” he asked. 

“I’m not your daughter!” she cried. “And you _won’t_ have them!” 

The Erlking whipped round. Fakir, with great effort, turned his head to watch. Gretel looked so much like Ahiru, just then: frightened and too small for her job, but determined to do it anyway. Fakir’s throat ached. _Oh, Ahiru._ Where was she?

“How dare you defy me?” the Erlking snarled. 

Gretel laughed. “You taught me!” she said; and she began to dance.

Fakir turned his head to watch her – and there was Ahiru’s body, on the leaves, not far away. 

His throat closed completely. Blood dripped onto the leaves, blackish in the shadows, as he reached for her. “Ahiru,” he whispered. 

Gretel darted away from the Erlking. He lunged for her, cutting a few brown wisps of hair from her head; but she dashed away to the other side of the clearing. “Come to me! Come to me!” she cried. 

Fakir’s arm throbbed. His fingertips brushed the feathery tuft on Ahiru’s head, light as a kiss. 

Ahiru opened her eyes. “Oh,” Fakir gasped. “You’re – _alive_ ,”

The Erlking loosed an inhuman shriek and lunged for Gretel. She spun away, and suddenly three Gretels spun around the clearing

Ahiru plucked a feather from her wing, and poked him with its shaft. 

“Stop it,” Fakir muttered. 

“I know that trick!” snarled the Erlking. “I taught you that trick!” 

Six Gretels spun; and they burst apart again, so twelve Gretels flitted across the leaves. 

Ahiru poked again, insistently. The point of the feather came up dark with blood, like ink. 

_Oh_. 

And there was a strip of birch bark, curled like a slip of paper, by Fakir’s cheek. 

“You can’t keep this up for long,” the Erlking said. 

“Long enough,” said Gretels, their voices blending together. 

Fakir took up Ahiru’s feather. He sliced the end on his sword, roughly, and dipped the tip into his blood. His fingers trembled. His print danced across the bark like a little child’s, uncertain as the writing in the first story he had written. 

But this story wouldn’t kill anyone. This one would save them all. 

The Erlking grabbed one of the reflection Gretels. The reflection shrieked and disappeared, and half of the others disappeared with it. 

Fakir’s writing was almost illegible on the bark. But the words were in blood: the blood he’d inherited from Drosselmeyer, and that had to make it strong. “And then Gretel’s grandmother defeated the Erlking; and they lived happily ever – ”

A pop. Three more Gretels disappeared, and Gretel slipped on the leaves. 

“Fakir, run!” Gretel cried. 

“Fakir!” shrieked the Erlking, in that high inhuman shriek, and he turned away from Gretel and came toward Fakir. “Fakir!” he screamed, and his gray hand dashed quill and birch bark from Fakir’s grip. 

Fakir grabbed his sword. He blocked the Erlking’s first strike, but the Erlking lashed out again. Fakir’s sword spun from his hand. He raised his hands to cover his face. The Erlking laughed – 

– and then the Erlking shrieked. And suddenly the clearing was silent. 

Fakir uncovered his face. The moon seemed very bright above him. “Ahiru?” he said.

“Quack!” Ahiru’s webbed feet scrambled on the leaves, and she pressed her warm feathered body against his neck. 

He patted her shakily. His fingers were still sticky with blood. “Gretel?” he called, weakly. 

“Grandma!” Gretel cried. Her red cloak flapped behind her as she ran to her grandmother. 

And: “Oof!” a comfortable old voice said. Fakir turned his head to see a squat plump woman hugging Gretel. “I expected you six months ago, liebling! Where’s my basket of butterkäse?” 

“I got waylaid,” Gretel said, voice muffled in her grandmother’s shoulder. “But that duck saved me – and Fakir – ”

Gretel’s grandmother turned her head to look at Fakir and Ahiru. A wart shone on her nose. “Well,” she said comfortably. “We’d best get you all some tea, I think.” 

***

A blue sprigged teapot floated across the cottage to greet them as they entered. Gretel’s grandmother snapped her fingers, and three mismatched cups rose from their hooks to be filled. “And what would you like?” she asked Ahiru. 

“Quack!” 

“Bread it is, then,” the old woman said, and snapped her fingers again. 

“You can understand her?” Fakir asked, stunned. A slice of bread tore itself into crumbs, dropping to the floor for Ahiru to nibble up. 

“Well enough,” the old woman said, offering Gretel a slice of apple cake. Gretel leaned against her. 

Fakir should have left them alone, perhaps, but he was too stunned. “How?” he demanded. 

“By _listening_ ,” she said. “Not something you’re good at, eh?” 

Fakir flushed. Ahiru let out a quack that sounded suspiciously liked a giggle. “Shut up,” he snapped. 

“But you talk to her,” the old woman observed. “That’s something, at least. I can see the beginnings of magic in you, in your fingertips.”

The cauldron above the fire let out a hiss of purple sparks. 

“You’re a witch,” Fakir said abruptly.

She cackled. “Took you this long?” she asked.

He bristled. “ _No_.”

She cackled again. “I shouldn’t tease,” she said. “You’re a prickly one, you are.”

“Grandma,” Gretel reproached. “He saved us.” 

“At least he helped his duck do it,” her grandmother said. She hugged Gretel’s shoulders, and said to Fakir and Ahiru, “I owe the both of you a boon. What’ll it be? Seven-league boots? Invisibility cloak?”

Fakir licked his lips, which had suddenly gone dry. He sipped his tea. He _hated_ asking for things. But all the magic in his fingertips hadn’t helped them at all, so he said, gruffly, “Can you turn Ahiru back into a girl?” 

“Into a girl?” Her wrinkles rearranged as her thick gray eyebrows rose. “Have you tried kissing her, boy?”

Fakir’s face heated. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “She started out as a duck, and then she became a girl, and now…”

The old woman was shaking her head. “Turning animals into people is strong magic,” she said. “Strong, strong magic, much beyond what I can do. Why, I can barely turn people into animals, and it only lasts the full moon! Hardly long enough for your princess to fall in love with you.”

“Quack!” Ahiru cried, and flapped to the window. “Quack quack _quack_!” She caught the curtain in her beak, gave it a tug, and tumbled off the windowsill. 

The full moon’s light spread across the floor like spilled milk. 

“Well,” said the old woman. “Maybe long enough for _you_. Drink up your tea, dearie.” And before Fakir had even finished blushing, the tea began to tingle in his throat: and he looked down, and saw feathers growing from his arms, and suddenly the floor was much closer than before. 

Ahiru flapped over to him, almost dancing with joy on her big duck feet when she landed. “Fakir!” she cried, and Fakir tripped over his big duck feet, it was so good to hear her voice again. 

***

Gretel and her grandmother stood in the window. The witch leaned her wrinkled elbows on the sill, looking out. Gretel stood on tiptoe beside her. She tugged back the curtain impatiently. The moon shone down on the garden in front of the house, silvering the herbs. 

For a moment, the moonlight gilded two ungainly silhouettes rising from her garden. But the two ducks flapped onward, and soon they disappeared into the mist.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to isiscolo and asakiyume for betaing!


End file.
